production of lead at the Eurydice was in full swing, owing to the demand for bullets and resulting good prices for lead. Then in 1947, the mine was inspected and stated to be Closed because of the falling price of lead, now that the war is over. There are no stockpiles. No ore has been sent to a mill or sold in the last year. No staff except a night watchman.
Wait a minute. I flipped back to the beginning and read through the stack of inspection reports. In the twenties the mine had been producing gold at a good clip. Then the precious metal ore came to an end, and the mine produced lead. There was no mention of Executive Order L-208. The mine had never closed during the Second World War, because the gold at the Eurydice had played out in the 1930’s.
Victoria Lear had been eager to get started on the initial public offering of stock in the Eurydice Mine. She’d started looking at documentation that someone wasn’t prepared for her to see. The information in front of me had been her death warrant.
A light rain misted the windshield as I coaxed my van up Interstate 70. Red sparks-brake lights of vehicles ahead-appeared and disappeared through the haze. It was like driving through a dream. I slowed the van and tried to get my racing mind to do the same.
After the gold was gone, the underlying ore, full of lead and zinc, had provided a bonanza for Albert Lipscomb’s grandfather until the war was over. Whatever enthusiastic belief Albert’s grandfather may have had that there was still gold in his mine was based on hope rather than reality. This hope, a common pipe dream in Colorado, had been fed by Albert, Tony, or both, in securing questionable assays and, I was now willing to bet, buying off a shady geologist. But the partners hadn’t counted on Victoria Lear making a trip to the state archives.
Still ? how did you get from there to Albert disappearing with all the money? And why had he felt he had to kill the teller? And what was Tony Royce’s role in all this?
I sped up the van. Marla couldn’t have murdered Tony, I told myself. She was impulsive, yes. She had a temper. But as far as I knew, she hadn’t investigated the Eurydice beyond getting Macguire to show one of the Kepler assays to someone at the School of Mines. There was just no way she would fight with her boyfriend, knife him, steal his watch, throw him in the creek, then march over and assault the person who’d photographed their presence at the campsite. And to follow that up by hitchhiking back into town, then hiding out until she could claim she was assaulted by an unknown attacker? No way.
Now, it was possible that Marla had been extremely angry with Tony. She had ample reason to be, I countered as I braked hastily behind a grocery truck. Tony had been two-timing her. Make that three-timing, if you believed in the existence of the stripper. Or four-timing, if Eileen had lied about their breaking up. No matter what, Tony certainly had been involved with all manner of women until he’d made a pretense of loyalty to Marla. And if Marla knew of his playtime with the med student… I didn’t want to think about it. Besides the infidelity, she could have been upset about Albert’s absconding with her money. Tony hadn’t warned her that his partner might be using a disreputable assay lab. And Tony might have suspected that Albert would steal money from the Prospect partnership account if one of their deals went bad.
So maybe Marla and Tony had had an argument. Maybe she had even hit him. But Marla wouldn’t, couldn’t hit Macguire. Of course, in the storm, and with him in the rain poncho, she may not have known it was Macguire. Then again, perhaps Tony had been the one to hit Marla and Macguire, plant the evidence, and take off with the gun. But Tony wasn’t bald. And although he’d been wearing a watch, it was not his ultraexpensive one. The Rolex, I was willing to wager, was not a bauble you’d absentmindedly leave behind at your girlfriend’s house if you were taking off for parts unknown.
“I just don’t get it,” I said aloud. At the exit to the upscale Genesee area, I wondered if the De Groot-Hersey investigative team was spending any time over at Tony Royce’s house in Eagle Mountain Estates. His place was near Albert’s. Perhaps the cops were still up at the campsite, or, for that matter, at Marla’s house. Actually, I rather favored the idea of them being out in the rain.
Once I exited to Aspen Meadow, I passed a popular creekside picnic site that had been claimed by the overflowing Cottonwood. This was probably the place Sam Perdue and his sprained-ankle customer in the ambulance had encountered the near-drowned child. I shuddered. Water had boiled above the edges of the creekbed and now ran freely through a wide area of flattened grass. It gushed up the sides of a picnic table and bench. On the far side of the site, the grill stood just a few inches higher than what now looked like a fast-flowing river.
I wondered where Albert Lipscomb was at this very moment. I hoped that he, too, was soaking wet and suffering. Suffering abysmally.
I began driving down the new, recently widened highway that led to Aspen Meadow’s Main Street, eight miles away. Mountain residents had bitterly fought the widening of this byway, formerly a tortuous two-way road. A broader route would bring more unwanted people, with their blight of problems, to our little burg, the protesters claimed. These invaders would drive away wildlife, wildlife that was viewed by a preponderance of Aspen Meadow residents as being a higher life-form than humans. Now, with the clouds lifted just above the treetops, the tawny meadows on each side of the road looked deserted. Suddenly, though, the meadow seemed to shiver. I slowed and pulled the van onto the muddy shoulder. Moving deliberately across the sodden grass was a herd of elk, maybe forty head. Half a dozen calves trod haltingly next to their mothers on impossibly thin, delicate legs. Coming from the East Coast, Marla and I treasured this kind of sight. Lord, how I wanted her back.
I revved up the van and drove home. Without Marla to talk to and plan with, and without Tom to give me updates, I felt anchorless.
I’d been on the periphery of some of Tom’s cases before. From time to time, I’d even become more involved than he would have liked. But with my friend under arrest, things didn’t look promising for my taking merely a benign interest in the case. I sighed. My idea might not be feasible. It certainly wasn’t legal. But what was the alternative? Go home and wait for your friend to call. It might as well have been, Go home and wait for your friend to have a heart attack. Go home and wait for us to maltreat her. Go home and wait for our captain to convict her of murder.
I ran toward my front door. I had to do something for Marla, because nobody else would.
“Gosh, Mom, where have you been?” Arch demanded as he came bounding down the stairs with fake’s long, nut-brown body at his heels.
“Did you get hold of Marla?” I demanded. Jake gave me his usual mournful, slobbery look.
“Yes, and I told her to eat Jell-O,” Arch said. “She ;aid you’d better bring her Epipen down to the jail. She said you’d know what that was.” His face lengthened. “Mom, she said she was miserable.”
My weight of guilt doubled. “Any other messages?” “General Bo called. We had a nice talk. He asked all about how I was doing and about Jake.” He paused to pat the hound reassuringly. “Anyway, Bo kept saying he wanted to talk to you bad. He’s on his way over.”
“Really?” It was just past three o’clock. I had lots to do, but I needed to talk to Arch. “Listen, hon, I want you to hear this from me instead of from your friends. Tony Royce is missing from the camping trip he took with Marla. The police think Marla hurt Tony. They arrested her this morning, and that’s why she’s in jail ? “
“Yeah,” he said, interrupting me, “Marla told me. I turned on the news, but there wasn’t anything. Do you suppose the arrest will be in this week’s copy of The Mountain Journal?”
I had no idea whether Marla was a big enough fish to warrant news coverage, even from our weekly excuse for a paper. I certainly hoped not.
“Probably not, hon. Arch, uh, may I borrow Jake?” His face clouded. He clasped Jake’s collar and the two of them awkwardly backed away from me.
“Why?” His voice cracked. “For how long?”
“Well, he needs to be part of the thing I’m planning with Marla. But I want you to stay home, because it might be dangerous.”
“No,” he said stiffly. His fingers held Jake’s collar in a death grip. “You’re not taking him. He’s my dog and he trusts me. Jake was mistreated by his last handler. What do you want him to do? I’m his handler now. He won’t perform well for anyone but me.”
“Oh, please, Arch, I’m not going to mistreat him, and this is for Marla ? “
Arch turned to go up the stairs. “C’mon Jake, let’s go to my room.”
“Wait, honey, wait.” He stopped and gave me a hostile gaze. “Okay, Arch, you can come. But you have to
